A central part of most any business operation is the withdrawal of various items from inventory and reordering a new stock of the items as the original stock is depleted. For example, in the typical business office, a stock of items such as pencils, tablets, erasers, etc., is maintained for use by the office personnel. Usual procedure is for the office personnel or stock clerk to periodically check the bins or storage compartments containing the items and fill out an order sheet listing the various items, their item numbers and the quantity to be reordered.
There are a number of problems associated with this common rather haphazard practice. One problem is that reordering is costly because it generally requires trained personnel, is time consuming and is subject to error. Another problem is that some items in the inventory are depleted at a faster rate than other items so that an unexpected shortage can occur. Yet another problem is especially true of small businesses wherein the job of maintaining inventory is usually only one job of many that the stock clerk must do so that his/her performance is subject to errors and problems such as running out of stock that might be avoided by a more dedicated and simplified system. These inconveniences and additional expenses must be borne by the customer who is maintaining the inventory. U. K. Patent 2210349 A to Neame is for a method for keeping track of containers in which one portion of a two portion label is attached to the container and a second portion containing barcode is attached to delivery papers and sent to a central office where the bar code is machine read and stored in a computer as a record of the whereabouts of the container. The method does not involve machine recognition of alpha numeric characters that could be translated into ASCII representation and stored into computer memory. Nor does the Patent disclose any computational procedures that would be involved in any business operations other than simple registration as to the whereabouts of particular containers.